{"id":5195,"date":"2026-05-13T15:05:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T19:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/?post_type=profiles&#038;p=5195"},"modified":"2026-08-12T07:45:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T11:45:55","slug":"miles-walker","status":"publish","type":"profiles","link":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/profiles\/miles-walker\/","title":{"rendered":"Miles Walker"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"533\" src=\"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/Walker-Miles-edited.jpg\" alt=\"by Corban Swain\" class=\"wp-image-5770\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1;object-fit:cover;width:213px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/Walker-Miles-edited.jpg 400w, https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/Walker-Miles-edited-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Hampton University<\/strong><br>Faculty Advisor: Prof. Danielle Wood<br>Research Supervisor: Sharif Islam<br>Department: Electrical Engineering and Computer Science<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:0px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Biography<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Miles Walker is a rising senior from Minneapolis, Minnesota, studying cybersecurity<br>at Hampton University. He has a deep curiosity for human-computer interaction and<br>sociotechnical systems, a curiosity that sparked when his passion for social justice intersected<br>with his technical college coursework. In the future, Miles intends to pursue a PhD and conduct<br>research in human-computer interaction. He hopes to explore how computing technology can<br>be leveraged to tackle societal issues such as equity, homelessness, and discrimination. At<br>Hampton, Miles conducts additional research within his department and is heavily involved<br>with the Freddye T. Davy Honors College and the Cybersecurity Club. In 2024, he was a<br>Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) intern at the National Institute of<br>Standards and Technology (NIST), where he performed and presented research on the impact<br>of human factors in real-world cybersecurity incidents. In his free time, he enjoys gaming,<br>running, and cooking new recipes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><br><strong>Applying NISAR Satellite Data for Combating Agricultural Drought in Angola<br>Miles Walker1, Sharif Islam2, Danielle Wood2<\/strong><br>1Department of Computer Science, Hampton University<br>2Space Enabled Research Group, Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><br>Angola has made significant progress since its civil war ended in 2002. However, the country<br>still suffers from a high level of food insecurity and malnutrition, which is exacerbated by its<br>most prolonged drought in four decades. The drought has significantly impacted Angola\u2019s agricultural<br>production, contributing to the aforementioned food insecurity along with other public<br>health concerns. MIT\u2019s Space Enabled research group has been working closely with Angola to<br>develop a decision support system (DSS) to aid decision-makers in navigating the crisis. This<br>project builds on past work by utilizing satellite data from the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture<br>Radar (NISAR) mission to assess drought conditions. By analyzing soil moisture information,<br>this project aims to produce new insights into Angola\u2019s drought and how to combat it. The<br>soil moisture data provided by the NISAR mission were converted to root-zone soil moisture<br>(RZSM) and subsequently used to classify drought severity (D0-D4) for Angola. MATLAB<br>was also used to enable deeper analysis. This approach has produced a preliminary mapping<br>of drought in parts of the country. The findings of this research have the potential to improve<br>policy decisions in Angola and inspire intervention efforts in communities impacted by drought<br>around the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":5409,"template":"","profile_category":[25],"class_list":["post-5195","profiles","type-profiles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","profile_category-2026-interns"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/5195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profiles"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/5195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5771,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/5195\/revisions\/5771"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"profile_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile_category?post=5195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}